TEE INADEQUACY OF SPEECH 4*9 



THE INADEQUACY OF SPEECH 



By De. CHAS. W. SUPER 



ATHENS, OHIO 



ALMOST all the sounds that the human voice is capable of pro- 

 ducing are used to express thought, feeling, or will. Many of 

 these sounds are incorporated in articulate speech; but not all. It is 

 to be remarked further that the term " articulate speech " includes 

 many sounds that are not vocal, in fact the large majority are only 

 modifications of vocal utterance. The most peculiar of those occurs in 

 the language of the Hottentots: they employ sounds produced by in- 

 spiration or by means of the air in the mouth. These sounds are four 

 in number and have been described as the " interjection of annoyance 

 on the part of the owner when the china falls, the drawing of a cork, 

 the giving of a kiss, and the sound of encouragement to a tired horse." 

 They can be learned only from the natives by direct communication, 

 since it is as impossible to represent them graphically as it is the 

 croaking of a frog or the wail of a hyena. At least one writer main- 

 tains that they are the bridge over the gulf between the speech of man 

 and the cries of animals, and are the primeval utterance out of which 

 language was developed. No one tongue employs all the sounds which 

 the human voice is able to produce, or even a majority. The instruc- 

 tion books for English place the number at about forty; but this is 

 far from being all that are in use. Some languages, like the classical 

 Italian and especially the Finnish, in both of which the vowels are 

 numerous compared with the consonants, have few sounds and such as 

 are easy of utterance. Conversely, the Kussian employs combinations 

 of consonants that it is almost impossible for adult foreigners to pro- 

 duce. 



It must be remembered that a literary language is an artificial crea- 

 tion. Even the best instructed people do not speak as they write. The 

 national adjective by which a language is designated is a much mis- 

 understood word. England is a comparatively small country, yet to 

 the ear there is much diversity in English speech. Tins diversity grows 

 slowly less and less with the advance of national education, since by this 

 means each rising generation is gradually led to conform to a common 

 type. Appleton Morgan, the president of the New York Shakespeare 

 Society, affirms that the members of Queen Elizabeth's parliament could 

 not understand one another. This statement does not mean that the 

 dialects of the different counties were as diverse as if they had been 

 foreign tongues, but only that the diversities were of such a nature 



